There was a time when our country prided itself on being led by educated men and women; personalities who on occasion could also, without resorting to the services of a third party or sinking into ridicule, take up the pen and reveal, in doing so, that a style, true, sometimes powerful, does not necessarily harm the expression of a thought or the relation of an action. Let us remember, to name only the most capped, De Gaulle, Mitterrand. Accomplished statesmen, writers no doubt, without it being possible to clearly establish a relationship of subsidiarity from one to the other. In short, everyone felt very comfortable.
These times are over if we are to believe the embarrassing bronca which followed the release in bookstores this week of “American Fugue”, a novel, the second after the remarkable “Absolute Music”, by Bruno Le Maire, formerly and also current Minister of Economy and Finance. And beautiful souls exclaim: “A minister who writes? You do not belive it. What impudence in these inflationary times! Let him work instead, which is what he’s paid for. “Strange reactions, strange time, strange country…
Concert in Havana
Because after all, let it be said, even if there are not many of them in his corporation who can legitimately claim to be such (Édouard Philippe, perhaps…), Bruno Le Maire – whom we also know to be close de Houellebecq or Olivier Guez, a great reader including authors from the most contemporary literary field, such as Knausgaard for example – is unquestionably a writer and this novel, “American Fugue”, a melancholy crossing of the century, a very nice book.
The meeting with the Russian pianist Vladimir Horowitz (1904-1989, here in 1986) will change the life of Franz and Oskar Wertheimer.
AFP
It would therefore be the story embedded in the Story of two brothers and a pianist. Coming from a large Central European Jewish family driven from their homes by Nazi and Stalinist barbarism, Franz and Oskar Wertheimer left their New York refuge one day in 1949 to go to Havana to attend a concert by the already glorious Vladimir Horowitz. Franz, bewildered by all kinds of anxiety, calms them only with the prospect of also becoming an emeritus pianist. Oskar, ten years her junior, is destined more for medicine, psychiatry more precisely, while letting his days flow in the arms of the beautiful Julia.
Basically, it is only a question of lost horizons and lines of flight
However, it is he who will become intimate among the intimates of the “maestro” while at the same time, Franz will give up his only ambition. For what ? How ?
Romantic mastery
It is to answer these questions that Le Maire, himself an absolute music lover, deploys with impeccable romantic mastery like a fresco that will span several decades and examine the sorrows and loneliness of each other. Besides Horowitz, well-known figures appear here and there, Richter, Rubinstein, Wanda Toscanini…
Basically, it is only a question of lost horizons and lines of flight. From another world that gradually becomes impossible. Even for the rich. Even for ministers…
“American Fugue”, by Bruno Le Maire, ed. Gallimard, 480 pages, €23.50.
